Welcome back to the #weeklywonk. This is my weekly article on dustinczarny.com on statistics and data. Each week I look at a political subdivision having a competitive election this fall and analyze the registration, electoral, and other pertinent data that encompasses it. This helps you understand the story behind election results in our home of Onondaga County. This week I finished my investigations of the 4 Assembly districts that represent Onondaga County. NY Assembly district 129th represents towns of Geddes, Van Buren and three quarters of the City of Syracuse in Onondaga County. William Magnarelli (D) represents this district serving continuously from 1998. This is the only Assembly district in a primary as with Onondaga County Legislator Maurice Brown (D) mounting the challenge.
NY Assembly District 129th is the other district inside Onondaga County. This means that this weekly work can solely rely on data from the Onondaga County Board of Elections. As of June 6, 2026, we see the district has 66,490 active voters. Democrats hold a large plurality with 28,905 voters (43%). The non-enrolled are second, with 20,019 voters (30%). The GOP is a distant third with 13,724 voters (21%). Rounding out the registration is the other category (2,392, 4%), Conservative Party (971 1%), and Working Families (479, 1%). Democrats have a +22.83% advantage in the district which is the biggest of all four Assembly districts. The Syracuse portion has the most voters in the district with 66% (44,658) of the active voters. The Two Towns trail by a great deal. Geddes is second with 18% (12,033 voters). Van Buren is third with 15% (9,799 voters). Overall, this district split even between these four political subdivisions.
As we noted in the last few editions, the story of redistricting for Assembly districts is a little different than the Senate and Congressional districts. Like the Congressional districts, Assembly members have run on three different maps of the last three cycles, but the Assembly district maps were never drawn by the NY Judiciary as they were never part of the lawsuit in 2022 thus the NY Legislature maps created in 2022 stood until a separate lawsuit required the NY IRC. Like most Assembly Districts, AD 129 there was no change in the 2012, 2022 & 2024 maps. There were also only minor changes around borders inside the City of Syracuse portion of the district. One of the advantages of having a district inside Onondaga County is getting up to date registration information. But this is why we see a major drop in registrations in 2026. The mail check cards along with NVRA and National Change of Address. All of this is how we clean our voting rolls by taking voters off the active rolls that have mail returned. This adversely affects the City of Syracuse and specially student population of Syracuse University who drop substantially in non -presidential years, This is why the growth of the district since 2016 is essentially flat, with growth only being 1,121 voters, a growth rate of 1.71% slower than the growth rate we saw in Onondaga County during that period of 7.63%.
Focusing on the district’s political subdivisions reveals how the City of Syracuse portion dwarfs and shapes the district. Not only does the City of Syracuse portion double up both towns put together, the extreme partisan domination of Democrats in the district shapes the partisan leans of the district. Democrats enjoy a +34.03% partisanship lean with Democrats have seen times more and non-enrolled have over three times more voters than Republicans. Democrats have only a borderline lead in the town of Geddes (+3.53%) and trail in the town of Van Buren (GOP +4.51%). However, the substantial number of voters in Syracuse is what gives the district its overwhelming Democratic lean.
Another advantage to analyzing a district inside of Onondaga County is more data readily at hand. This allows me to get a little more granular on our heat map. In this map I color code the leanings of every election district in the 129th. Here we see that Syracuse is dominant blue but with six eds on the north side not in the most dominant +20% range. The town of Geddes is mostly in blue in the Solvay and Fairmount portions, though there are borderline GOP eds in purple. As we went north into Lakeland, only then do we see GOP leaning districts in pink and aligned districts in red. Though Baldwinsville and surrounding areas in Van Buren do have three borderline GOP, one borderline Dem district and even two leaning Dem districts.
Looking at the district’s partisan trends the stableness of the district has led to flat partisan baselines of Democrats and Republicans. Since 2016 Democrats have gained 1.163 voters. In the inverse the GOP has done a great deal worse, losing 1,400 voters since 2016. Like most districts the non-enrolled surge is prevalent. Since 2016 non-enrolled have gained 3,364 voters. The rise of the non-enrolled and flattening of the Democratic growth is also flattening the ideological gain of this district. Though the City of Syracuse lost voters each year, this has not led to a loss of left leaning ideological dominance in the district. The district grew consistently from 2012 (+17.99%) to 2026 (+23.45%). As of time of pulling data this is the best the left ideologies have dominated this district.
Once again, the fact that this district lays entirely inside of Onondaga County I have more tools to use to get a good picture of the district. This year I wanted to look at the age registered voters to get an idea of the differences in different communities. The average age of Onondaga County is 51.05 years. AD 129th is the youngest of the four Assembly districts. Because of the influence of Syracuse University, the 18-30 age group holds the plurality (21%). The differences in ages really come in the Towns and Syracuse portion. We also see that though the non-enrolled are more prevalent in the under fifty age ranges, Democrats still hold the plurality in all the age groups, even the 18-30 group. Both towns’ Geddes (52.13), and Van Buren (51.90) are older than the average age of the county and Syracuse portion (47.97) is much younger.
Now that we are back in Onondaga County, I can use our system to look at the comparison races for this year. This gives us an idea of how this district performs in comparison to the rest of the county in similar races. First off, we look at the last result in the district itself, however the last contested contest in the district was in 2020. Bill Magnarelli easily won re-election with +43.05% of the vote. To get an idea of how this district performs we must look at the comparative races. Mannion for Congress (+32.67%) and Kamala Harris (+30.39%) performed their best in this district in 2024. In the mid-term year in 2022 Governor Hochul won the district by 21.53% and Fran Canole won the district by 25.33%, though both performed better in AD 128. This district performs differently in odd years with Emily Essi’s county clerk race only winning the seat by 17.46% and the 2021 Supreme Court race, Brindisi won this district by 22.76%, though both did better in this district than any other Assembly. The Democratic performance in this Assembly District in the six comparative races the district averaged +25.02% for the Democrats while Onondaga County averaged +8.73% in those races. This is the best of all Assembly Districts in Onondaga County.
As we close this edition of the #weeklywonk it is important to note that that AD 129 is the youngest, best in Democratic registration, and best in Democratic performance of all four Onondaga County Assembly districts. Next week I will turn my attention back to the towns of Onondaga County. This time I will focus on the towns that nominate candidates for office by caucus. We will start with the battleground town of Camillus. As always, you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.
Dustin M. Czarny 